It's nice that Reuters and the rest of the mainstream media is reporting Cheney's remarks attacking Dems for calling him and the administration liars.
"What is not legitimate and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible, is the suggestion by some U.S. senators that the president of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence."But the mainstream media knows Cheney did distort the truth in the lead up to the war, so why aren't they reporting on it? Reuters does a big story on Cheney's accusations against Dems, yet doesn't bother mentioning Cheney's various comments that, at the time, had no substantiation whatsoever?
So let's take a trip down memory lane, a trip that Reuters and the rest of the mainstream media seems afraid to take:
Cong Henry Waxman has a document online detailing 51 times that Cheney misled the country about Iraq! (The Cheney stuff begins on page 26 of the document, which is actually page 32 of the pdf file.)
Do you remember the one where...
1. Cheney Claimed Iraq Was Providing WMD Training To Al-Qaeda Months After Source Recantedor the one where...
2. Cheney claimed Saddam was harboring Al Qaeda? He wasn't, and there was no credible evidence saying he was.or the one where...
3. Cheney claimed Saddam gave Al Qaeda bomb-making expertise and trained Al Qaeda terrorists how to use chemical and biological weapons? Saddam didn't.or the one where...
4. On Sept 14, 2003 Cheney claimed, for the second time at least, that there was evidence suggesting Mohammad Atta visited the Iraqi embassy in the Czech Republic? He didn't, and Cheney knew the supposed evidence had already been debunked, yet repeated the charge on Tim Russert's show as a justification for the war.or the one where...With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack
5. Cheney lied during the VP debates last October, saying that he NEVER had publicly connected Iraq and 9/11. Of course, he did on Meet the Press a year before:or the one where...Cheney: "If we're successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it's not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it's not a safe haven for terrorists, now we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
6.Cheney outright lied, denying he linked Atta to the Iraqis - of course, he did link the two:
June 17, 2004. Vice President Cheney talking to CNBC's Gloria Borger:Borger: 'Well, let's go to Mohamed Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, 'pretty well confirmed.' 'On Dec. 9, 2001. Cheney talking to NBC's Tim Russert (this is perhaps the first time he made this lie):
Cheney: 'No, I never said that.'
Borger: 'Okay.'
Cheney: 'Never said that.'
Borger: 'I think that is . . . '
Cheney: 'Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9th of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down.'Cheney: 'Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that -- it's been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point, but that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.'
